Clinton adviser forced to apologize for promoting Colombia trade deal

Friday 4 April 2008 15.29 EDT
First published on Friday 4 April 2008 15.29 EDT

Hillary Clinton's chief strategist was forced to apologise today for meeting with Colombian officials to promote a controversial US free trade deal, one day before Clinton told Pennsylvania labour unions she opposes the pact.

Mark Penn serves as Clinton's campaign guru while keeping his job as chief executive of the international lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller, which has a $300,000 contract with the Colombian government.

The meeting was first reported in the Wall Street Journal, with the spokesman for Colombian president Alvaro Uribe saying he did not know if Penn attended on Clinton's behalf or for his lobbying firm. Penn later called it "an error in judgment that will not be repeated".

"The senator's well-known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed [with the Colombians], Penn told NBC news.

The White House is pushing for congressional approval of the free trade pact this spring, but most Democrats have refused to back the pact until Uribe puts a stop to attacks on trade unionists in his country.

Nearly 475 workers have been killed since Uribe took office in 2002.

"We've got to have new trade policies before we have new trade deals," Clinton told Pennsylvania union leaders the day after Penn's meeting. "That includes no trade deal with Colombia while violence against trade unionists continues in that country."

The line between lobbyist and campaign adviser is a potentially perilous one for Penn, whose firm has also offered public relations help to Blackwater, the security contractor accused of killing Iraqi civilians, and Countrywide, a major lender of risky subprime mortgages.

Clinton has also condemned rival Barack Obama for a meeting his economic adviser held with Canadian government officials earlier this year.

During that meeting, according to media reports, Obama's adviser downplayed his promise to revisit the North American Free Trade Agreement as a political gesture.

Now that Penn's promotion of the Colombia deal has emerged, the Obama camp is raising charges of hypocrisy.

Obama's spokesman sent reporters a Clinton quote from last month, at the height of the Canadian flap: "Just ask yourself [what you would do] if some of my advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments," she asked.

The labour alliance Change to Win, which has endorsed Obama, called the Penn meeting "outrageous" and urged Clinton to fire him.

"We have questioned Penn's role in the Clinton campaign in the past for his representation of union busting employers ... Penn [previously] said there was a wall between him and his firm's representation of union busters," Change to Win executive director Greg Tarpinian said.

Obama has joined Clinton in opposing the Colombia trade agreement, which would lower tariff barriers on exported goods. Two days after Penn's meeting on the deal, Uribe publicly chastised Obama on the issue without mentioning Clinton's identical stance.

"I deplore the fact that Senator Obama, aspiring to be president of the United States, should be unaware of Colombia's efforts" on trade, Uribe said earlier this week.